Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
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Hey! Good Evening!
This evening's music features one of the most influential blues harp players of all time, the original Sonny Boy Williamson, usually referred to as Sonny Boy Williamson I. Enjoy!
John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson - Sonny Boy's Jump
"Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence."
-- Thomas Jefferson
News and Opinion
An interesting analysis, worth reading in full:
Greece: Sound and Fury Signifying Much
All of Europe, and insouciant Americans and Canadians as well, are put on notice by Syriza’s surrender to the agents of the One Percent. The message from the collapse of Syriza is that the social welfare system throughout the West will be dismantled.
The Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has agreed to the One Percent’s looting of the Greek people of the advances in social welfare that the Greeks achieved in the post-World War II 20th century. Pensions and health care for the elderly are on the way out. The One Percent needs the money. ...
Greek democracy has proven itself to be impotent. The looting is going forward despite the vote one week ago by the Greek people rejecting it. So what we observe in Alexis Tsipras is an elected prime minister representing not the Greek people but the One Percent.
The One Percent’s sigh of relief has been heard around the world. The last European leftist party, or what passes as leftist, has been brought to heel, just like Britain’s Labour Party, the French Socialist Party, and all the rest.
Without an ideology to sustain it, the European left is dead, just as is the Democratic Party in the US. With the death of these political parties, the people no longer have any voice. A government in which the people have no voice is not a democracy. We can see this clearly in Greece. One week after the Greek people express themselves decisively in a referendum, their government ignores them and accommodates the One Percent.
The American Democratic Party died with jobs offshoring, which destroyed the party’s financial base in the manufacturing unions. ... Today with the Western peoples facing re-enserfment and with the world facing nuclear war as a result of the American neoconservatives’ claim to be History’s chosen people entitled to world hegemony, the American left is busy hating the Confederate battle flag.
Greek Parliament Capitulates!
Greece's Vital Bailout Vote Is Splitting Syzria
Greece's parliament is set for a midnight vote on Wednesday on a new austerity bill, as political and social tensions escalate again in the debt-stricken nation. ...
Greece's deputy finance minister Nadia Valavani stepped down on Wednesday over her dissent on the bailout. "I'm not going to vote for this amendment and this means I cannot stay in the government," she said.
Her resignation comes just over a week after the departure of Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who stepped down the day after 61 percent of Greek voters opted to reject austerity in a referendum on July 5. In an interview on Monday he told the New Statesman that he's feeling "on top of the world" now he's left his position. ...
Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis also voiced his rejection of the new proposals, saying in a post on his ministry's website that the deal that Prime Minister Alex Tsipras reached was "unacceptable" and called him to withdraw it. ...
The austerity bill that lawmakers are faced with tonight will condemn the country to years of further budget savings, but are also vital in terms of receiving a new bailout and averting likely financial collapse. At least 109 out of 201 Syriza's central committee members have called for a "no" vote. ...
Civil servants today held a 24-hour strike in protest at the measures, disrupting public transport, and shutting down state-run services across the country. Pharmacies joined in with their own 24-hour strike to object to the austerity deal, which will allow some non-prescription drugs to be sold by supermarkets.
Greek parliament in tough debate over accepting bailout terms
Make-or-break moment as Greek MPs prepare to vote on austerity proposals
Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, is preparing for a make-or-break parliamentary vote over the austerity measures Athens must take in exchange for a fresh bailout from its eurozone partners.
The deal – which includes austerity measures tougher than those overwhelmingly rejected by the Greek public in a referendum this month – has come under fresh fire after the International Monetary Fund published a highly critical paper calling for large-scale debt relief for the stricken country.
The IMF’s “debt sustainability analysis”, which was published by the Washington-based lender after parts of it were leaked to the media, suggested Greece may need a 30-year moratorium on repayments; or a substantial “haircut” – a partial write-off of its debts.
Michel Sapin, France’s finance minister, supported the analysis, saying: “The IMF is saying the same thing as we are.” But Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has made clear that a debt haircut is unacceptable.
Eurozone ministers received the paper before the 17-hour summit last weekend; but the deal that emerged contained no upfront pledge of debt relief – only a promise to discuss it.
IMF threat to pull out of Greek bailout challenges Germany
The International Monetary Fund's threat to pull out of bailouts for Greece unless European partners grant Athens massive debt relief poses a stark challenge to Germany, the biggest creditor, which insists on IMF involvement in any future rescue. ...
Its latest intervention, saying in essence that Greece will never be able to repay its debt mountain, is bound to sharpen debate when the German parliament meets on Friday to decide whether to authorize negotiations on a third bailout for Greece since 2010 that could cost an extra 85 billion euros.
It sharpens an unadmitted rift between Chancellor Angela Merkel, who wants to hold the euro zone together, and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who thinks Greece needs to leave the currency area, at least temporarily. ...
But the IMF's debt sustainability analysis may force her within months to choose between two far more unpalatable options: grant massive debt relief or see the IMF walk away.
The report's conclusion that Greece needs debt relief "on a scale that would need to go well beyond what has been under consideration to date" makes it harder for her to argue that Germany will ever get much of its 57 billion euro exposure back.
Workers walk out in Greece in protest over austerity measures before parliament
SYRIZA committee members slam Greece agreement
More than half of the governing left-wing SYRIZA party's central committee has signed a statement slamming the agreement Greece reached with its European creditors earlier this week, describing it as a coup against their nation by European leaders.
The statement, signed by 109 of the committee's 201 members, says the agreement was "the result of threats of immediate financial strangulation" and is a new bailout with "humiliating terms of supervision, destructive for our country and its people."
Three senior officials lose their jobs at APA after US torture scandal
The torture scandal consuming the US’s premiere professional association of psychologists has cost three senior officials their jobs, part of a reckoning that reformers hope will lead to criminal prosecutions.
As the American Psychological Association copes with the damage reaped by an independent investigation that found it complicit in US torture, the group announced on Tuesday that its chief executive officer, its deputy CEO and its communications chief are no longer with the APA.
All three were implicated in the 542-page report issued this month by former federal prosecutor David Hoffman, who concluded that APA leaders “colluded” with the US department of defense and aided the CIA in loosening professional ethics and other guidelines to permit psychologist participation in torture. ...
“This is a major step toward reforming the APA and the profession,” said Stephen Soldz, a longtime APA critic on torture affiliated with Physicians for Human Rights. ...
Soldz is part of a group pushing for the APA to refer the Hoffman report to the FBI and justice department for potential criminal inquiries. Thus far, the APA has committed to providing the report to the Senate committees overseeing the military and CIA, and a call to end all psychologist participation in US interrogation and detention operations is slated for APA consideration at a major conference next month.
Thus far, there is no indication from the justice department that it intends to revisit the politically fraught question of legal accountability for torture, which ended in 2012 without prosecutions. The defense department, which still assigns psychologists to Guantanamo Bay, has yet to comment; and the White House has stayed out of the fray.
Pentagon #2: ISIS No Threat to US Homeland
Testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee today, incoming Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Paul Selva raised some eyebrows by openly declaring that ISIS poses no threat to the US homeland, insisting they are simply something to be dealt with abroad.
Selva appeared eager to echo comments from the nominee for chairman, Gen. Joe Dunford, in his own testimony, declaring Russia an “existential threat to the United States” and laying out a list of threats, in order, topped by Russia.
Secretary of Defense: US Prepared to Attack Iran for Israel
Fresh off the announcement of the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, Secretary of Defense Ash Carterissued a statement declaring the US to be “prepared and postured” to attack Iran on Israel’s behalf whenever it decides to do so. ...
Carter is planning to visit Israel next week, something the White House is touting as proof of US military cooperation with Israel. With Israel railing against the nuclear pact, the idle talk of a US attack was seen as an effort to placate Israeli leadership that the deal doesn’t necessarily foil their efforts to spark a war with Iran.
This is an interesting article worth reading in full:
Iranians’ View of the Nuclear Deal: Optimistic, With Significant Caveats
U.S. media coverage of the Iran deal is, as usual, overwhelmingly focused on American and Israeli voices, with the hard-liner fanatics in each country issuing apocalyptic decrees, insisting that the deal is far too lenient on Iran and provides it with far too many benefits. Though largely excluded from U.S. media discussions, there is also substantial debate among Iranians about the virtues of the deal, with most viewing it positively due to the economic benefits it is expected to provide, but with many holding the view that it unfairly impinges on Iranian sovereignty in exchange for very few legitimate concessions. ...
Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University (who was one of the individuals targeted for NSA spying), has devoted most of his career to advocating for a normalization of U.S./Iran relations and the lifting of the sanctions regime. To the extent this deal accomplishes that, he said today in an interview with The Intercept, he supports it, though if it ends up confined only to nuclear issues, “then it will be very bad for both countries.” Amirahmadi added that the mood in Tehran is, in general, “very happy.” Ordinary Iranians, he said, “obviously like what has happened” primarily because “they expect money to arrive, which will help the economy and create jobs.”
But he noted several critical caveats. To begin with, expectations among ordinary Iranians are very high: they expect substantial economic improvement, and if that fails to materialize, Amirahmadi sees a likelihood of serious political instability, which “could go in a terrible direction for Iran.” He pointed out that for many years, the Iranian government has, with some good reason, blamed the U.S., Europe and their sanctions regime for the economic suffering of Iranians. “They no longer have that pretext, which means they have to deliver,” he said. He argued that the 1979 revolution was driven primarily by the Shah’s devotion to distributing wealth to a tiny elite at the expense of most Iranians, and that any repeat of that with this new flow of money would exacerbate wealth inequality even further and risk serious domestic unrest.
Iranians dance in streets, thank Rouhani for nuclear deal
Young Iranian men and women danced in streets in parts of Tehran and motorists honked car horns to cheer an historic nuclear accord with world powers they hope will end years of economic sanctions and decades of international isolation.
Millions of Iranians had followed the talks closely for months with the anticipation that Tuesday's deal would allow the economy, battered by years of sanctions, to stabilise and make their daily lives easier.
In the capital's affluent north, motorists played loud music from car stereos and young people blew South African-style 'vuvuzela' horns, scenes that Tehran normally witnesses only when the country qualifies the football World Cup.
The Syrian Refugee Crisis Will Transform Middle East Politics
By the time the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 ended, Israeli forces had expelled about 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes. Their plight led to the overthrow of Arab regimes as well as civil wars in Jordan in 1970 and in Lebanon from 1975 to 1990. Israel bombed refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Gaza. Radicalized Palestinians staged hijackings, airport massacres and suicide bombings that captured headlines around the world and more than once led to dangerous American-Soviet confrontations.
The legacy of Syria’s refugee disaster awaits. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, António Gutteres, has just declared that 4 million Syrians are now refugees in neighboring countries. That is almost six times greater than the number who fled Palestine. Another 7.6 million Syrians, he says, have also lost their homes but remain destitute within Syria. Gutteres said, “This is the biggest refugee population from a single conflict in a generation.” ...
Before the war began in 2011, Syria fed itself and provided almost all of its medicines from flourishing pharmaceutical industries. Now it is dependent on foreign charity that is anything but adequate. ... The U.N. has had to cut food supplies to 1.6 million refugees. John Owen reported on Voice of America that the monthly food allowance for refugees in Lebanon has been reduced from $27 last January to $13.50. Try feeding yourself on $13.50 a month to understand the reasons behind the desire of some Syrians to escape the region to feed their children. One 22-year-old Syrian, Osama al-Raqa, who lost his chance to go to university because of the war, told Agence France-Presse, “I dream of leaving to Europe. Europeans eat and live in houses. We, on the other hand, are homeless and the whole world treats us like a burden.”
Israeli Special Forces Assassinated Senior Syrian Official
On Aug. 1, 2008, a small team of Israeli commandos entered the waters near Tartus, Syria, and shot and killed a Syrian general as he was holding a dinner party at his seaside weekend home. Muhammad Suleiman, a top aide to the Syrian president, was shot in the head and neck, and the Israeli military team escaped by sea.
While Israel has never spoken about its involvement, secret U.S. intelligence files confirm that Israeli special operations forces assassinated the general while he vacationed at his luxury villa on the Syrian coast. ...
According to three former U.S. intelligence officers with extensive experience in the Middle East, the document’s classification markings indicate that the NSA learned of the assassination through surveillance. The officials asked that they not be identified, because they were discussing classified information. ...
Brig. Gen. Suleiman was a top military and intelligence adviser to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and was suspected of being behind the Syrian government’s efforts to facilitate Iran’s provision of arms and military training to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. Suleiman was also reported to have been in charge of the security and construction of Syria’s Al Kibar nuclear facility, which Israel destroyed in a 2007 air attack. The NSA document described part of Suleiman’s responsibilities as “sensitive military issues.”
Israel’s involvement in Suleiman’s assassination raises questions about both the purpose of the killing, as well as whether Israel violated international law in conducting the operation.
“The Israelis may have had many good reasons to kill [Suleiman],” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at Notre Dame. “But under international law it’s absolutely clear that in Syria in 2008, they had no rights under the laws of war because at the time there was no armed conflict. They had no right to kill General Suleiman.”
Heh, looks like Poroshenko's erstwhile partners, the Nazis from Right Sektor aren't taking well to being disarmed and muscled aside. What's a Chocolatier-in-Chief to do?
Tensions rising in Ukraine as far-right militia’s boobytraps injure two police
Double bombing follows weekend shootout between Right Sector fighters and police as president attempts to crack down on armed nationalists
Booby-trap explosions have injured two police officers in western Ukraine, further raising tensions in the region after a shootout with nationalists at the weekend left two men dead.
The continued violence in the area, which borders the European Union and is rife with smuggling, highlights Kiev’s struggles with both endemic corruption and armed nationalist groups who have helped it fight pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. On Monday Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, ordered the security services and police to disarm “illegal groups” and root out corruption and smuggling.
Two police officers in Lviv were taken to hospital on Tuesday after mysterious bombings that the interior ministry said were connected with “events in the Zakarpattia region”, referring to the shootout in the city of Mukacheve on Saturday that killed two men.
The gunfight began after police responded to the arrival of heavily armed Right Sector members at a sports complex controlled by an MP, Mikhail Lano, who openly opposes the group. Right Sector said its men had been trying to stop a smuggling operation, but others called it a fight over contraband.
Video footage showed Right Sector men shooting at a police car with Kalashnikov assault rifles and a heavy machine gun mounted on a pickup truck. The interior ministry said the far-right group had shot first.
Hat tip Azazello. Neoliberal darling "Yats" of the Kaganate of Nulands begs the west to strip his country's assets. Ukrainians are too corrupt to own them, you see. Pffffttt!!!
Ukraine PM calls on Canadian investors to help displace oligarchs
Ukraine’s Prime Minister is calling on Canadian investors to take part in a massive privatization of state assets organized by Kiev as a way of weakening the power of wealthy oligarchs blamed for spreading corruption in his country.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk cited, for instance, Ukrainian businessmen who have been “sitting like vampires” on the country’s publicly owned energy sector.
Mr. Yatsenyuk spoke to The Globe and Mail Tuesday after he joined Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Chelsea, Que., to announce that Ukraine and Canada had struck a free-trade deal.
Ukraine is preparing to spin off billions of dollars of government enterprises – including power generation and distribution assets and chemical plants – and the government wants Western investors to bring more orderly business methods to the Eastern European country.
“I don’t want Ukrainian tycoons to buy these state-owned enterprises,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said. “We would be happy to see Canadian folks buying Ukrainian assets and bringing into Ukraine good corporate governance, new investment and new jobs. ...
Mr. Yatsenyuk said Ukraine’s leadership feels privatization and deregulation are the answers to the corruption that has plagued the country for decades.
“Big government always leads to big bribes and big corruption, so the less regulations you have the less authority the government has and the less chances to take bribes,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a report on John R Lawson in the Las Animas County Jail under the guard of the murderer of UMWA organizer, Gerald Lippiatt (WE NEVER FORGET).
Tune in at 2pm!
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Eric Garner's family demand criminal prosecution after $5.9m settlement
Relatives say payment from New York City will not quiet calls for action from US government against NYPD officers involved in fatal chokehold last July
The family of Eric Garner, whose death after being choked by a New York police officer spurred forward a nationwide protest movement, demanded on Tuesday that a $5.9m payout from the city be followed by criminal prosecutions.
Speaking at a press conference in Manhattan, Garner’s relatives said the financial settlement would not quiet their calls for action from the federal government against those involved in his fatal arrest last July.
“Don’t congratulate us,” said Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr. “This is not a victory. The victory will come when we get justice. Then we can have a victory party.”
Garner’s daughter Erica said she would be satisfied “when we get indictments and when we get a fair trial”. She said: “This does not represent justice. We call on the Department of Justice and [attorney general] Loretta Lynch to deliver justice for my father.”
Garner, 43, died on 17 July after being placed in a chokehold during an arrest on Staten Island for allegedly illegally selling loose cigarettes. The city’s medical examiner ruled the death a homicide but a state grand jury decided not to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer who placed Garner in the hold, with any crime.
Bernie Sanders criticizes Clinton's policy stances
The independent Vermont senator is not about to take off his gloves, even in the midst of a race for the Democratic nomination for president. ... But on Tuesday, with the frontrunner for the Democratic 2016 ticket, Hillary Clinton, walking the corridors of the Capitol building, Sanders did attempt a few delicate jabs. ...
“I happen to believe that the trade agreements that have been passed here over the last three decades, Nafta, Cafta, the Chinese trade agreement, the TPP, have been disastrous for American workers, and have led to the loss of American jobs,” he said. “Secretary Clinton, I believe, has a different view on that issue.”
Clinton has repeatedly declined to say if she supports Obama’s historic 12-nation trade pact with Asia.
“I strongly opposed the war in Iraq,” Sanders said, “I voted against the so-called USA Patriot Act.”
Sanders chose not to say, explicitly, that Clinton, as a New York senator, supported both.
On climate change, Sanders repeated his opposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which he said would be “transporting or excavating some of the dirtiest fuel on this planet”, before adding: “I think Secretary Clinton has not been clear on that issue.”
Sanders also mentioned his support for greater regulation of Wall Street, “ideas that Secretary Clinton does not agree with”, as well as increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour and trillion-dollar investments in infrastructure, issues “the secretary has not been quite so clear on”.
“Lastly,” he said, “I believe that if we’re gonna rebuild the American middle class we need to make public colleges and universities tuition free and pay for it through a transaction tax on Wall Street speculators. The secretary’s position, I think, is unclear on that.”
Richard Wolff: On Bernie Sanders and Socialism
The Evening Greens
Blood Timber: International Logging Firms Worked With Brutal CAR Militias, Says Report
French, Chinese, and Lebanese logging companies operating in the Central African Republic have paid millions of euros to brutal militias during the civil war there, fueling atrocities including mass murder and rape, according to a report released today.
The timber felled during a civil war that has cost thousands of lives and displaced tens of thousands of people since 2012 was sold to European markets, where unlike diamonds, wood sourced from countries riven by conflict is not subject to trade restrictions.
In an undercover investigation, NGO Global Witness found three international logging companies made frequent payments to a rebel group during a period in which it engaged in the mass and indiscriminate killing of civilians, as well as other abuses such as the forced recruitment of child soldiers.
Global Witness also secretly recorded representatives of European companies linked to the firms paying militia in CAR, who dismissed concerns about the conflict.
"It's Africa, we don't really pay attention," said a representative of Tropica Bois, a French timber importer half-owned by Lebanese logging firm SEFCA, one of three named by Global Witness as cooperating with rebels. "It's not really a concern. It's not a war where they attack white people. It's not a war we have to avoid."
PETA: SeaWorld Employee Infiltrated Animal Rights Group, Called for Grabbing "Pitchforks & Torches"
ExxonMobil gave millions to climate-denying lawmakers despite pledge
Under pressure from shareholders, company promised eight years ago to stop funding climate denial – but financial and tax records tell a different story
ExxonMobil gave more than $2.3m to members of Congress and a corporate lobbying group that deny climate change and block efforts to fight climate change – eight years after pledging to stop its funding of climate denial, the Guardian has learned.
Climate denial – from Republicans in Congress and lobby groups operating at the state level – is seen as a major obstacle to US and global efforts to fight climate change, closing off the possibility of federal and state regulations cutting greenhouse gas emissions and the ability to plan for a future of sea-level rise and extreme weather.
Exxon channeled about $30m to researchers and activist groups promoting disinformation about global warming over the years, according to a tally kept by the campaign group Greenpeace. But the oil company pledged to stop such funding in 2007, in response to pressure from shareholder activists.
But since 2007, the oil company has given $1.87m to Republicans in Congress who deny climate change and an additional $454,000 to the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), according to financial and tax records. ...
Alec, an ultra-conservative lobby group, has hosted seminars promoting the long-discredited idea that rising carbon dioxide emissions are the “elixir of life”, and was behind legislation banning state planners in North Carolina from considering future sea-level rise.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
ACLU Sues to Stop Bulk Phone-Data Collection, Even if it's Only Temporary
2 courts have overturned his conviction. So why is this Guantanamo prisoner in solitary?
Terrorism, Ukraine and the American threat: the view from Russia
Grexit or Jubilee? How Greek Debt Can Be Annulled
Greece - Parliament Now Voting
The Democrat's Warhawk
Québec Canada Saves Its Boreal Forest
KosAbility: Weaving a Community of Many Voices through Republishing
"I am Jazz" debuts tonight
A Little Night Music
John Lee 'Sonny Boy' Williamson - Good Morning School Girl
John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson - Hoodoo Hoodoo
John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson - Stop Breaking Down
John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson - Shake the boogie
John Lee "Sonny Boy Williamson" - I Been Dealing With The Devil
John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson - Sloppy Drunk
John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson - Million Year Blues
John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson - Better Cut That Out
John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson & Memphis Slim - I Could Hear My Name A Ringin'
John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson - Train Fare Blues
Sonny Boy Williamson I - She Was a Dreamer
John Lee Sonny Boy Williamson I - Mean Old Highway
Sonny Boy Williamson w/Yank Rachell - Whiskey Head Blues
Sonny Boy Williamson I - G.M. & O. Blues
Sonny Boy Williamson I - Mellow Chick Swing
John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, harmonica legend: a lecture/demonstration